To ensure patient safety and quality of care in healthcare settings, it is often important for healthcare facilities to comply with a variety of standards and protocols. For example, healthcare facilities must often comply with a variety of mandatory standards for licensure and/or accreditation. Additionally, many healthcare facilities strive to comply with voluntary standards, such as those for accreditation by the Joint Commission of Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. Further, many healthcare facilities set their own internal standards that meet or exceed these mandatory and voluntary external standards. These internal and external standards are typically driven by best practices and accordingly set forth procedures with which clinicians, such as physicians and nurses, must comply. Additionally, documentation of clinicians' practices is often required to ensure compliance.
For many clinical care processes, such as in the context of anesthesia and surgical settings, standards for patient safety and quality of care are important, for instance, to reduce the chance and severity of complications. For example, standards often dictate events to be completed during an operation, as well as any required documentation of those events. Depending on the length and complexity of an operation, this may include a long list of events. Accordingly, it may be difficult for clinicians to remember each event that must be completed and documented during operations. Additionally, some operations may be extremely long, making it difficult for clinicians to remember events that occurred earlier in the operation. Some operations may be complex and involve a multitude of clinicians, further making it difficult for clinicians to remember which events have been completed and which events have yet to be completed.
Currently, some clinicians may work from memory of events that need to be performed during a clinical care process. However, such practice may be prone to error depending on the complexity of the process. In some cases, clinicians may work from a list of events to be completed during the clinical care process. However, such lists are not actionable and do not provide a convenient approach to tracking event completion. Additionally, when an event requires documentation, the clinician must manually document the event and any necessary details either during the clinical care process, which is burdensome, or after the clinical care process is completed, which is susceptible to memory error. There is currently no convenient approach to tracking and documenting event completion. Additionally, there is currently no convenient approach to timing events or providing reminders for events during a clinical care process. Further, there is currently no convenient approach to coordinating events among multiple clinicians participating in the same clinical care process.